Anime Spotlight #35

Covering Darling in the FranXX reminded me of Mirai Nikki — “Future Diary” — so I figured I would go ahead and make note of this Anime as well. Especially when both shows have very similar male-female protagonist couples in them….

Yuno is the Japanese transliteration of the Roman goddess Juno, who herself is fairly “yandere” in behaviour — according to myths about her. Yuuki(terou) is the Japanese transliteration of the Roman god Jupiter, Juno’s brother and king of the gods — in this case, Yuuki becomes “leader” in the competition designed to determine who will replace “Deus Ex Machina” (means “God from the machine” in Latin) as almighty ruler of the Universe itself. In effect, Mirai Nikki is an Anime re-hash of the Graeco-Roman legend of Jupiter and his siblings replacing the titans as rulers of the Universe.

Now, onto what immediately comes to everyone else’s minds when they think about this Anime: Yuno, and her yandere-ness.

While avoiding spoilers as much as I dare, it is probably no stretch to say that Yuno is the most infamous yandere in all of Anime right now. Thanks to what she received growing up as a child (not unlike Zero of Darling), as a teenager she has zero qualms about killing anyone who gets in her way; her only anchor is Yuuki, who just happened to be in the right/wrong place at the right/wrong time to catch her attention. If he doesn’t give her an order, she’s practically a one-person monstrosity; too bad he can’t even rely on her to obey him all the time…. We can rely on Zero to always follow Hiro’s orders (it’s when he doesn’t give her orders that she tends to do whatever), but the fact that we can’t do the same with Yuno is part of why she can be so frightening to watch.